Beatty sole candidate for S.C. chief justice

Associate Justice Donald Beatty is the only candidate to run for chief justice of the S.C. Supreme Court after all.

Beatty, the lone African-American on the five-member court, is the senior most associate justice on the court.

By longstanding tradition, the senior associate justice, runs unopposed for the vacancy created by a retiring chief justice and is elected by acclamation.

But since January, some prominent conservative white Republican lawmakers have publicly criticized two high-profile Supreme Court opinions in which Beatty was in the majority, calling them “unconstitutional.”

In one opinion, Beatty joined with two other justices and ruled the state had to better fund public education in low-income black rural counties. In another 3-2 opinion, which he authored, Beatty sided with consumers over car dealers in a case involving allegedly hidden closing costs in vehicle purchases.

Upset by those two opinions, some white lawmakers speculated that perhaps Associate Justice John Kittredge, a white man and the second most senior justice, should run for chief justice against Beatty. Kittredge had been on the losing side of the school funding and auto dealers’ cases.

But Kittredge, who last month indicated he might might a run for the chief justice seat, decided not to challenge Beatty.

The state Judicial Merit Selection Commission early Monday afternoon released Beatty’s name as the only candidate for the top post on the state’s highest court.

A challenge to Beatty by Kittredge, or some other white candidate, would have likely sparked a deep rift in the Legislature between blacks and conservative white Republican lawmakers.

“It would have been war, and it would have been very costly for South Carolina,” said S.C. NAACP Lonnie Randolph, whose group recently ended a 15-year boycott of South Carolina over the Confederate flag flying in a place of honor in front of the State House. In July, the Legislature – following the massacre of nine blacks in a Charleston church, allegedly by a white supremacist who revered the flag – voted to take it down.

Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, an African-American with 23 years in the S.C. House, said, “You have 100 years of tradition that would have to be thrown out of the window for someone to challenge Beatty. That would be hard to answer.”

“I don’t know about war,” Neal said, “but it would have been a public relations nightmare for the Republican Party and made for an uncomfortable situation in the Legislature.”

The idea that conservative white lawmakers wanted to deny Beatty the chief justice post in exchange for another justice who would write opinions more to conservative lawmakers’ liking apparently alarmed current Chief Justice Costa Pleicones.

In a speech to lawmakers last month, Pleicones urged them to respect judicial independence and not impose litmus tests in judicial elections.

Pleicones steps down Dec. 31 because he will have reached the mandatory retirement age of 72. Beatty will fill his unexpired term, which runs to 2024.

Rep. Rick Quinn, R-Richland, who last month indicated he hoped Kittredge would run, said Monday he could understand why African-Americans felt the way they did about Beatty. “I was open to the most qualified candidate that was available to me, and I certainly won’t have a problem in voting for Justice Beatty.”

The 170 lawmakers in the General Assembly will elect judges and justices on May 25.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 12:32 PM with the headline "Beatty sole candidate for S.C. chief justice."